Pink sings and soars above as Brisbane crowd holds its breath

After all the kerfuffle about Pink being forced to reschedule Sydney shows due to illness, it takes just five minutes of watching her onstage to realise how impossible it would be to perform such aerial stunts with even the mildest of head colds.

At the first of seven Brisbane shows on her Beautiful Trauma tour, Pink welcomed the capacity crowd by clinging to the side of an oversized chandelier high above the stage, black glittery bodysuit, heeled boots and all.

Pink soars above the crowd in her Beautiful Trauma tour, at her Perth show.Credit:Sean Finney

Flips and spins, hovering above a bright magenta-and-pink stage filled with Willy Wonka-esque oversized lamps and suitcases pushed about by her back-up dancers, Pink kicks the show off with, of course, Get the Party Started.

For the next two hours, she takes the crowd through a trip down memory lane to the earliest days of her career, when her hair colour matched her stage name and defiant grunge made mockery of her bubblegum pop star peers, before bringing out some of her most recent and powerful hits.

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Anyone going to a Pink show knows they won't be sitting through a snoozefest of a singer walking back-and-forth clutching a microphone. The Brisbane Entertainment Centre audience collectively holds its breath while Pink serenely swings overhead in a complex, elegant dance with a male dancer, suspended by a pair of silk ropes.

“No way,” the woman next to me gasps as Pink casually hangs upside-down, metres above the pit, held in place simply by one foot - still singing.

The rapidly changing spectacle of set pieces - a giant blow-up Eminem that a flying Pink kicks in the face during Revenge; to a forestry of dancers wearing bird and fox masks through Secrets and Try - are prevented from becoming too much simply by the power of Pink’s fierce voice and charisma.

Pink's career has outlasted many of her contemporaries as she created a unique and honest persona.Credit:Sean Finney

A tribute to grunge and pop-rock stars, Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit is melded to No Doubt’s Just a Girl - the second Nirvana tribute of the night after warm-up act the Rubens also brought out the '90s rock.

There’s no time it doesn’t look like Pink is having fun - looking as comfortable soaring above the crowd in a harness as she does bouncing around to giant flames roaring out of the stage, happy to be singing and making sure no one in the crowd feels ignored.

“You live in a rad place,” she tells us as she catches her breath between songs.

I Am Here, a song off the 2017 album the tour is named after, “makes my cheeks hurt from smiling”, she says, and congratulates a couple in the crowd for their 20th anniversary.

The Beautiful Trauma show takes the audience through a whirlwind of set pieces.Credit:AAP

“You guys deserve a medal,” she says.

Towards the end of her set the big screen lights up with clips of the singer through her career, a consistent theme running through the snippets of interviews from the early 2000s to now - a woman living her truth, and ensuring her daughter can do the same.

Holding out some of the best for last, Pink concludes with, of course, So What.

But it’s not the end. After circling the stadium and waving to a clearly delighted audience, she returns for a single, final song, Glitter in the Air, as the mobile phone torches light up across the stadium.

A week’s rescheduling, in the grand scheme of things, is a small price to pay to see a powerful artist who has carved out for herself a long-term career singing her truth, whether that’s onstage or above it.

Pink’s Beautiful Trauma tour will play 35 arena shows in Australia, including seven shows at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, August 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21 and the rescheduled show date of August 22 (moved from August 23 to make it possible to reschedule postponed Sydney show dates).